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>The natural way to use Slack is to use it in a web browser, which could easily be an open source web browser. The web browser may be free, but all of the Java
by davexunit 11y ago
>The natural way to use Slack is to use it in a web browser, which could easily be an open source web browser.
The web browser may be free, but all of the JavaScript you are running is proprietary.
>And there are many closed-source IRC clients.
But there are many free ones, and there isn't an official client that is proprietary. It's possible to use Slack, more or less, over IRC or XMPP, but they are second-class citizens. The recommended way to use Slack is via their proprietary web interface.
- mikeash 11y agoI don't think I've seen anyone worried about running proprietary JavaScript in a browser before. I suppose that's consistent, but I don't know how many would agree with it. The utility of a web browser is deeply limited if you only use it to run open source code. As I already asked, do you also advocate against hosting the code on GitHub? That seems like the same problem.
- Karunamon 11y agoThe source of the JavaScript is open by virtue of being an interpreted language, and as such it can be edited and modified by the end user.
- davexunit 11y agoThis is absolutely not true! The "source" is often minified JavaScript code, which is not the source code. In legal terms, it is a binary. It's a build artifact, the output of a program, not a human. Source code is the preferred form of modifying a program. The developers of a web application certainly don't use this form of their program when hacking on it. Giving someone a concatenated, minified version of a JavaScript web application is not giving them software freedom. And even if the JavaScript files were not minified, they likely aren't available for user modification and redistribution because they are protected by copyright and a license that says "all rights reserved."